Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.

"I'm just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master's degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job," Bitterman said.

One expects to read about this sort of thing at church-affiliated schools, but at a state-run community college? Are we really reaching a point in this country where everything said and taught in an academic setting must be weighed against the possibility of offending Christian fundamentalists? Are supposedly secular educational institutions more and more downplaying or even censoring truth and reality at the behest of a group of people who believe that ancient mythology negates and supercedes the disciplines of science, history, and reason?